Your school photo from hell

Peter’s post on the worst item of clothing you owned reminded me that the point of having something so shameful in your closet was so you could wear it for school picture day. Because here’s what I know about school pictures: I have never, ever taken even a halfway passable one, and if there was something shameful I was wearing or styling myself into at the time, it got memorialized in the worst possible light and my parents ordered ten wallet-sized shots of the whole debacle.

freshpics.blogspot.com

They even managed to make Jennifer Love Hewitt look like a dork.

I am not sure why school picture day is still around, why some go-getter kid hasn’t just pointed out the madness of it all and staged a school-wide boycott. My photos from kindergarten through high school are all frighteningly awkward and hideous, but I also don’t think I’ve ever seen a good school photo of anyone. My child had the misfortune to inherit my stiff picture face, and hers don’t even look like her. It’s like someone offered her five bucks to make the most unnatural smile of her life. The only point I can see to going through with school picture day is to desensitize yourself early for the inevitable wretched driver’s license and passport photos.

The set-up, as I remember it, is terrible. You waited in line with your classmates in some awful outfit you chose yourself, which you would later regret. When it was almost your turn, an assistant would grab a comb and part your hair in a crazy way, or attempt to tame little flyaway’s so that you ended up with either a static-riddled mop or something that looked like it had been pasted to your head. You then sat in a chair, assembly line-style, in front of a bad drape and stared into some really bright lights. Interrogation cells have more flattering light. Some guy with a big camera would tell you to say cheese or crack some horrible joke, and you’d force out a grin, trying not to crack under the pressure. Then you’d shuffle off, hoping the picture would be okay, but knowing deep down you had failed again.

Two weeks later you’d get an envelope with your overpriced package of prints. If your life really sucked, your parents would frame the pictures and put them on the wall in an annual progression, creating a timeline of your worst possible expression ever. Every grade represented by some terrible shirt and a constipated-looking face.

Personally, I think each of those pictures should come with a caption explaining how your mom gave us that haircut under duress, how bolo ties actually did have a moment in the 80’s, how acne is now considered a real medical condition but back then the only treatment your mom would buy was Oxy-10 pads.

I believe my worst photo ever was the year of the bad perm, a.k.a. fifth grade. My hair frames my face in a perfect frizzy pyramid. I’m wearing a very loud shirt from the Esprit outlet, and my skin is this really strange sickly color. Somehow you can see every single one of my teeth, but my eyes have disappeared. The backdrop has palm trees or something, but it’s clear, I’m on no beach, I’ve just climbed straight out of hell. If I can find a copy of this picture, I will scan and post it, and then move to Afghanistan.

School pictures: Yay or nay? What was your worst ever?

KELLY MILLS is a freelance writer, personal trainer, and co-owner of

Phoenix Gym in Berkeley. She saves her favorite swear words for her own